Tank Role Actions: Quick Strategy & Discussion

Here’s a general rundown and a quick analysis on how useful each of the tank role actions are.

Rampart: Your bread and butter defensive cooldown. A must have if you are ever planning on taking damage. Take it 99% of the time.

Low Blow: Only bring it if there is something that needs to be stunned. If you played DRK before, keep in mind this no longer does damage!

Provoke: Essential for any encounter with a tank swap. Every tank has also used this as a panic button, heh. (Provoke mechanics in FFXIV work like this: you get to the top of the enemies’ enmity meter +1: so you have to follow it up or you will lose aggro right after)

Convalescence: A decent cooldown, but varies GREATLY depending on your synergy with healers. Has a nice interaction with DRK’s Living Dead. Great for large dungeon pulls.

Anticipation: High uptime, but not a lot of mitigation. It’s more reliable against a lot of small hits than hoping to parry a few large ones.

Reprisal: Basically free damage reduction. This is useful for any boss encounter. A must have for any raid or trial. Not as useful in dungeons as it only affects 1 target.

Awareness: Very situational; it’s hard to say if you need this or not without being familiar with the content you are running. Has good synergy with cooldowns such as Raw Intuition or Bulwark.

Ultimatum: Provoke in an AoE definitely great for dungeons, an “oh shit” button when all the mobs start running towards the healer. I would suggest bringing this over Provoke for dungeons, but not for trials or raids. (Provoke mechanics in FFXIV work like this: you get to the top of the enemies’ enmity meter +1: so you have to follow it up or you will lose aggro right after)

Shirk: Helps make tank swaps a lot easier. Only useful in raids and trials, do not bring this into dungeons. It has a niche application for opening bursts for raids, but it’s only something a finely tuned group would consider (and even then, maybe pointless).

Tank Role Actions for Dungeons

These role actions should be taken when “queuing blind” in a random dungeon, and should serve you well for general content.

Rampart: Short cooldown and powerful. You’re crazy to zone without it.

Convalescence: Amazing when doing large pulls, takes a lot of stress from your healer.